Operation: Manifest Blanket Donation

What do you get when you put together 1 holiday season, 2 SUVs, 4 volunteers, and 180 blankets? If you guessed a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, you’re oh so close! Aside from that you also get Operation: Manifest Blanket Donation. What’s that you ask? It was a whirl wind of a day where myself and 3 other Manifest employees volunteered time out of their busy busy day to trek to a Chicago-area Walmart, purchase, and jam pack 2 cars with box upon box of soft micro-fleece blankets. And when I say jam-packed I’m not exaggerating; take a look yourself…we thought we were going to have to call for reinforcements. In fact, we actually did until we found a few extra crevices for every last blanket (including Liz and Chris’ laps). Why 180 blankets? For the holiday season Manifest donated one blanket on behalf of each of our clients. Great job clients!

Car #1- Ryan Nicholson ponders where on Earth the last boxes will fit

Car#2- Christine Mortensen (me) finds the last nook and cranny

All of this was a coordinated effort on behalf of the organization Ten Thousand Blankets founded by Jeff Leitner for Blanket Week, a crazy ambitious, campaign to collect and donate new blankets to those that need them.

But our Operation didn’t end there. From the store we caravaned to our final destination, The Pacific Garden Mission on the Near south side of Chicago. Since 1877, Pacific Garden Mission has been a refuge for those in the area seeking food, shelter, clothing, medical, and dental care. It’s a great and facility and we’re proud to have done something positive for this community.

You can make a donation to Ten Thousand Blankets as well! Next Week in fact is Blanket Week where they’re looking to donate as many blankets as possible between Monday, March 15 and Sunday March 21, 2010. So you can have that warm and fuzzy feeling too.

To see all of our photos check out the Manifest Facebook Fan Page.

Liz Metz is an excellent blanket holder!

Chris and Myself unloading at The Pacific Garden Mission

Chris and Myself unloading at The Pacific Garden Mission

2010
03/12
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Life
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Facebook Strategy: To Fan Page or to Profile?

During the day working at Manifest Digital, I am the happy victim of quite a few “drive by’s”. Last week I got a chance to help out one of our Ux Evangelists, Jason Ulaszek answer a really good question in regards to a current project he’s on.

Should we create a Fan Page or a Profile?

  • Creating a Fan Page is a best practice as users will look for that first over a regular profile page
  • A Fan page adds credibility behind the brand, it appears more official/professional (credible)
  • Fan pages provide valuable reporting features or “insights” such as fan count, the number of interactions on your page each week, the demographics of your fans and more
  • Fans can easily interact with each other via wall posts, discussion boards, etc.
  • Fan pages provide an opportunity to create custom applications hosted on your fan page that visitors can interact with. This also creates an additional visiting attraction to the Fan page.
  • Having a fan page allows you to send messages to your entire FB fan base at one time
  • You can leverage your own personal profile page by sharing posts from the fan page (via the “share” button)
  • A Fan Page allows you to create the Fan Page box/widget for your site, that promotes all of the fan activity on the fan page itself (an example of what this looks like)
2010
02/18
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Marketing
Social Media
Tips & Tricks
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A Brief Look at What Not to App: Chase Blueprint

Chase Blueprint: A good example of how NOT to use a Facebook App. Chase had a good idea in trying to leverage existing assets (i.e., video, banner ad integration, a microsite, etc.) but the execution falls WAY short when they let the design and messaging become cluttered and pop-ups (iFrames) don’t load properly. I have to ask, was Facebook a good choice for this campaign? It probably was, but this serves as a good example of why you need to tailor your experiences to both your audience and the channel(s) you choose to communicate through.

You can’t just take all of your content and throw it together like it’s a salad. To continue the food metaphor, your social marketing should be more of a well planned and organized buffet. You choose what to serve and where based on what your guests might like; they decide what to put on their plate.

Check out the Chase Blueprint Facebook Fan Page for yourselves and let me know what you think.

2010
02/16
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Marketing
Social Media
UX Design
Visual Design
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Podcast Testing 1…2…3

Well it’s been an idea in our heads for quite some time but it FINALLY just became a little more real!

This afternoon my fabulous co-worker Kevin Malone and I finalized the initial topics we’ll cover in a Manifest Digital employee podcast we’re calling imMEDIAte. We’ll strive to keep it casual and conversational as the topics will relate to what’s new in marketing, design, and technology. The plan is that it’ll give listeners an inside peek into what we think about the changing world around us, from an “in the trenches” perspective. Employee guest appearances should really keep this interesting as we have quite a cast of (exceptionally smart) characters here.

Stay tuned for an official release announcement in early February as official recording starts next week!

Here’s our test recording with subsequent Garage Band editing. Warning…it’s a little creepy.

2010
01/19
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CATEGORY
Podcast
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Do you need my money that bad? I’m pretty sure I need it more.

Apparently Capital One REALLY wants my money (and yours too, well so do all the banks and creditors right?). I was just checking my email and saw this “wonderful” offer Capital One is promoting for it’s “high yeild” bank account. It claims that if I start out now and deposit $10,000 and continue to save $250 per month over the course of 5 years I’ll have $26,070 assuming that I don’t make any withdraws. See below…there’s even a pretty graph!

Trust? Worthy? Banking? Results?

HELLO!!!!!!

If I save $250 per month for 5 years on my OWN that’s $15,000. Add my original $10,000 and I’m at $25,000.

So basically Capital One, you’re saying in a perfect world (of a sad 1.2% interest rate) I’ll earn $1,070 in interest over the course of 5 years? Hmmmm no thanks. I can think of better ways to invest my money.

What do you think?

Don’t even get me started on the headline of “Trust. Worthy. Banking. Results.” Why not put that all in one sentence instead of four? Oh right, because you’re a bank and you’re full of crap. Ok, I’m done now. Thanks for reading :)

2010
01/06
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Business
Marketing
Random Thoughts
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A Letter From my Friend to Her Liver on my 30th Birthday

Dear Liver,
I am sorry for the abuse you suffered at Morty’s birthday party.  I can’t say it won’t happen again, because it will, but one of these days, i will give you a much needed vacation.
Love,
haley
2009
12/31
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Life
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Merry Manifest!

I love these adaptations of our logo and brand that our Creative Director, Christine Bridger, originally created for an internal T-shirt design contest. And they’re just too good to be forgotten in an Illustrator file somewhere. So I quickly made a few desktop backgrounds out of them for you to download and use as you like.

‘Tis the season for giving after all!

There are 2 sizes, 1024 x 768 (top 4) and 1600 x 1200 (bottom 4)

1024 x 768

2009
12/22
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Not Unlike Locusts

Last Thursday we held our 3rd Annual Manifest Holiday Sweater Jubilee and subsequent gathering at a local establishment. It’s a small in-house event we started since we traditionally hold our official holiday party in mid-January. I just wanted to share with you a little before-and-after photo essay of one of our refrigerators. A picture is worth a thousand words, isn’t it?

Before the Holiday Sweater Jubilee

Well stocked before the Holiday Sweater Jubilee

After the Holiday Sweater Jubilee

After the Holiday Sweater Jubilee

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holidays to you and yours! Thanks for reading.

2009
12/21
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Life
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One to Grow on…

On a recent project I was welcomed to the team via email in which the closing statement was just too good not to share nor to illustrate:

“Success will be found at the intersection of Time and Money.”
— Jennifer Conklin and Howell Malham, Manifest Digital

What Success Looks Like

2009
12/15
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Business
Random Thoughts
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Life Out Loud

By golly, I think she’s got it! I think I’ve finally settled on what the heck to call my blog!?

LIFE OUT LOUD

If I just use the initials it’s also LOL. This is going to be fun to work with over the next couple of weeks (hopefully only a couple weeks!).

It only took me 3 years. Ever notice how it’s always more difficult to do things for yourself than it is for others, e.g., a site design, your own identity, the name of your BLOG! Sigh…such is life.

What do you guys think? Yay? Nay?

2009
11/03
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Life
Random Thoughts
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